Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which has blighted the lives of so many young men.

Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world--the brains of men.

Continually one faces the horrible matter of making decisions. The solution is, as far as possible, to avoid conscious rational decisions and choices; simply to do what you find yourself doing; to float in the great current of life with as little friction as possible; to allow things to settle themselves, as indeed they do with the most infallible certainty.

The world, in its sheer exuberance of kindness, will try to bury the poet with warm and lovely human trivialities. It will even ask him to autograph books.

Fifty percent of the world are women, yet they always seem a novelty.

The plural of spouse is spice.

A mind too proud to unbend over the small ridiculosa of life is as painful as a library with no trash in it.